There has been a long series of discussions about the problems with housing affordability which to the politicians and financial corporations is an issue for someone else to deal with. But unfortunately, President Trump is inheriting a problem which I first started to notice early in 2024, where the working homeless are now finding it difficult to afford any place to live a relatively normal existence.
Just like the 2007-2010 period as housing collapsed.
In that era, people were evicted from their homes as landlords and homeowners lost their homes due to foreclosure during that era of rampant speculation. I remember driving all throughout Southwest Florida, deliberately pulling into Walmart parking lots, shopping centers, and malls to see if the rumors were true. I would then report on my radio program and the various internet message boards on the poor souls living in their cars, vans, and campers as the affordability issues along with the great financial crisis came to a head.
This excerpt from an article in the UK Guardian on October 29, 2009 highlights the plight of these poor souls:
I had nowhere to go, so I moved into my dad’s trailer and parked it in a Wal-Mart parking lot. I’d heard from a friend that they sometimes let people in trailers stay in their lots. I had no running water, gas or electricity, but it was a place to crash.
About 30 other people were living there in trailers and cars. We tried not to draw attention to ourselves so customers didn’t complain. There wasn’t much socialising but having other people around made me feel safer. One “neighbour” was a former doctor who spoke several languages. Another used to own three houses. We were a new face of homelessness – middle-class people with stable lives that the recession had wiped out.
There are numerous stories recounting the disaster of the 2007-2010 Great Financial Crisis and the recession which impacted millions of lives forcing people to live in their cars, in tents in the woods, or yes, even storage units.
What piqued my curiosity in this case was a mention from my wife tonight, where she recounted a video she had seen on TikTok about people living in storage units again. During that GFC, I did rent a storage unit and remember seeing the poor souls living there and wondered just how bad that financial crisis might get as not only was it hard to find work, but to find affordable housing for people who lost everything was becoming a challenge.
Fast Forward to 2025
The Great Financial Crisis ended, President Obama put more money into every household’s pocket with Obamacare, and Ben Bernanke’s Quantitative Easing to infinity cured income inequality and housing affordability in 2012; right?
No, not really. No one was held to account nor really charged. The remaining major banks were allowed to redesign and evolve a new financialization of credit to rebuild the housing economy, and Americans were told how great everything was and this was all President Bush’s fault.
History belongs to the victors, sorry Mr. Bush.
Fast forward to this year and perhaps the post-Covid speculative boom is over and housing affordability has improved, right? Not so fast says the National Association of Home Builders:
Since the number of potential buyers is shrinking due to their inability to access credit, be it due to wages, history, or employment stability the numbers on household formation shall probably continue to crater; not just due to societal changes either.
Sadly, renters are in no better shape as this Harvard study from 2024 reflects with the latest dataset available from 2023:
To really understand what is driving this crisis, the embedded inflation which the politicians and financial media claims is under control is actually destroying the lower and lower middle class ability to survive in this current economic environment as demonstrated by this graph from the same study:
This is where the flashbacks to 2006 through 2011 really begin to hit home and remind me that the crisis is not recognized until the banks, government, and financial elites understand the hostility and pain the lowest 2/3rds of American society are struggling to deal with.
Inflation works great for assets, horrid for the masses; always has, always will.
The Videos
There was this romantic notion once in my life to head out into the woods in 2009 and make a documentary about America’s new homeless. I was warned away from that by a friend who is a policeman, telling me that while there are good people trapped in a horrible situation, the dangers to my own safety from others would not be worth it.
But watching these videos tonight, I fear we’re approaching another tipping point as a society and the absolute arrogance of our political class, regardless if there is a D or an R after their names is irrelevant. People are suffering and having a hard time finding meaningful work to make a living and afford what so many of us take for granted as a basic part of our daily lives.
NONE, I repeat none of what I post here is an attack on the current administration who inherited a nightmare scenario from the past 5 years of speculative and government excess. President Trump did not create this mess but let’s hope he has the wherewithal to clean it up, despite the pain that might entail. I fear the two political parties are not as interested nor concerned that their actions by stirring up more inflation and in concert with Trump’s tariff policies, may well start a fire they can not extinguish by next November.
The similarities to the political and economic outcomes of 1930 are starting to get quite uncomfortably close to becoming reality.
These videos are easily searchable and the stories of some are understandable, others quite sad. From what I understand there are literally hundreds if not thousands more on TikTok, a platform for which I do not participate on.
While this is an older video, I challenge my readers to go to a Walmart parking lot early any Saturday or Sunday morning. You will see what I do, people living in their cars with everything they own crammed into it. Many of them have jobs, but their credit has been destroyed, their lives reset, and hopes for a return to normalcy impaired by the continuous increase in the cost of living.
Even Dr. Phil covered this in his show from a few days ago titled “Living in a Car With a Job: The New American Reality” which one can watch by clicking on the link via YouTube.
Meanwhile in the storage units:
And here is the video that prompted this article, thanks to my wonderful wife who finds way to make me think outside the box.
What is sad about this, is that I’ve seen entire families living in these units and yes, I’ve helped them out with by donating some food when I’m there.
As the economy continues to deteriorate and the powers that be fail to address the inflation issues, this situation will only get worse. I advise my readers to start looking around and paying attention in the months ahead because it is only going to get worse as the student loan crisis and foreclosure wave ramps up from the GSE’s in the 4th quarter of this year.
Please, do what you can to help, but understand, it will take more than flowery speeches, false promises, and more inflationary policies from our political leadership to get out of this mess. It would appear the hardest of times are coming, and our society is ill prepared for the consequences.
